Inside WhatsApp Business
Getting Value from WhatsApp Messaging: Marketing Edition
|
September 29, 2022
The way that customers want to communicate with businesses has changed. Today’s consumers are always-on and mobile-first, using popular channels like Instagram and Facebook to discover new products. According to Forrester’s 2021 Moments Map, 50% of US online adults surveyed use chat to make purchases, and the level of use only increases among younger demographics, peaking at 62% with 25 to 34-year-olds.
Your customers are ready to move beyond email, phone calls, and native apps to get the kind of personalized shopping experience they’re looking for. Globally, 66% of online adults surveyed agree that messaging is their preferred way of communicating with a business, with that number growing to 72% among 18-34 year olds.1
But how do you ensure you’re getting the most marketing value out of messaging? If your business wants to generate, qualify, and nurture leads through messaging, how do you ensure your platform does all this, and more? Well, you can start by messaging with potential customers on an app they already use: one that’s global, scalable, and engages customers across the funnel.
WhatsApp is a high-reach global platform used every day by your customers. With 2 billion users around the world and an average2 and an average open rate of 98%, WhatsApp helps you create conversations with customers at all stages of the funnel. This means your business can have a scalable marketing solution to not only help engage and convert, but increase return on ad spend and remarketing. We’ve created this list of useful tips to help you get the most value out of WhatsApp messaging when driving marketing outcomes. Ready to jump in?
Take a full-funnel approach to marketing messages
WhatsApp isn’t just a back-and-forth text channel. It’s a messaging platform where customers can interact at all stages of the funnel. When you use a full-funnel approach to sending marketing messages, you help ensure customers are engaged and ready to take the next step.
Here are some ways to help get the most from marketing messages across the customer journey:
Top of funnel - send media-rich messages to customers to help engage and drive product awareness
Middle of funnel - message customers with unique offers and personalized messages to nurture and convert
Bottom of funnel - send helpful reminders when a customer has abandoned their cart and create remarketing ads that send customers to a WhatsApp conversation
Create ads that click to WhatsApp to get more value from your digital ad spend
According to a 2022 Marketing Industry Trends Report from Hubspot, 27% of marketers surveyed across industries believe generating traffic and leads will be their top challenge in 2022. Many businesses are rethinking their strategy when it comes to where and how they generate traffic and leads. Competing platforms and inflating ad spends complicates this process even more. This makes finding a scalable, high-reach platform to help you get the most from your advertising budget all the more important.
When creating digital ads to drive new traffic to your products, customer engagement is critical. What if your digital ads could reach a wider audience and also capture more qualified leads, while driving post-click engagement?
By using WhatsApp as an enterprise marketing tool, you can use seamless, full-funnel conversations to help build long-lasting customer relationships and unlock future growth. When creating your next digital ad campaign in Ads Manager, you can select a call-to-action that opens a conversation in WhatsApp, allowing your business to interact directly with interested customers. Click to WhatsApp ads help you leverage the reach of your ads across Facebook and Instagram to drive user-initiated conversations.
Using ads that click to WhatsApp, you can target wider audiences while nurturing leads with personalized messages, educational content, engaging media messages, recommended products, and more.
Reach - target audiences via Ads Manager by location, age, gender, or lookalike audiences
Engage - via ad formats like carousel, video, images, or Instagram Stories
Develop - optimize delivery of ads for more conversations on WhatsApp via the Messages or Link click objectives
Use media-rich messages to nurture new leads for better engagement and retention
Getting the most out of your conversations on WhatsApp also means taking advantage of the different kinds of messages available to engage and nurture your audiences. Personalized messages from your business can go a long way in creating a stronger connection with customers.
WhatsApp can also help you curate conversations across the customer journey to delight and retain your customers. In Sinch’s survey of over 350 businesses worldwide, 61% of respondents said that WhatsApp was a key channel for conversational customer engagement. Many businesses are leveraging new and exciting kinds of WhatsApp messages to connect with their customers.
Examples of media-rich messages you can use on WhatsApp include:
- Videos, images, stickers
- Voice notes and audio
- Documents, links, locations, product lists
You can use media messages to engage customers with a short video featuring a new product, send product images to a customer who’s considering buying an item, and message previous customers with a link to a personalized coupon to help them cross the finish line and click “purchase”.
The opportunities to use media messages span the entire customer journey, and message templates help you scale your efforts and reach wider audiences. Including quick-reply buttons in your message templates can help customers make decisions quickly and easily, moving the conversation further down-funnel.
Another way to ensure you’re getting the most engagement is to keep messages consistent and personalized. A good way to remember this is asking yourself if your messages are expected (your customer has opted-in), timely (sent at a normal time of day), and relevant (personalized and curated). This helps your customers build trust and confidence in you, keeping them coming back.
Automate messages to help raise your response rate
Quicker response times lead to higher customer satisfaction. Your customers don’t want to wait to hear back from you, in fact they expect an almost immediate response. A Salesforce study revealed that 71% of people surveyed want to speak to companies in real time.
With WhatsApp, you can use the power of automation to integrate chatbots into your messages, helping you be available to customers across time zones. You can also integrate WhatsApp into existing contact centers and support systems to offer live chat for customers who need help.
The best way to leverage automated WhatsApp messages is to have a chatbot handle your business’s most common questions: locations, hours, shipping costs, etc. This allows customers to get the quick response they need, while freeing up customer service agents to tackle the tougher questions.
Be sure to use automated messaging to also send promotions and timely offers to customers. Want to let customers know about a big, upcoming holiday sale? Or remind them that they’ve left an item in their cart? A personalized, automated message can do the trick, and help you reach more customers.
Automated WhatsApp messages are personal, scalable, and easy to use. Many businesses using the WhatsApp Business Platform have seen success integrating automation. In fact, this interior design business saw a 3X increase in customer response rates and 60% reduction in call center volume after integrating WhatsApp into their customer service channels.
Send helpful reminders to re-engage customers
According to Baymard Institute data, the average documented cart abandonment rate is just under 70%. For mobile users, the rate is over 85%. Whether it’s due to distraction or disinterest, solving abandoned carts is critical for re-engaging, and ultimately converting, interested customers.
As we’ve seen above, WhatsApp helps you send personalized, automated messages to customers who’ve abandoned their cart. Automated cart reminders are a simple, effective way to re-engage customers and encourage a purchase. With WhatsApp’s reach, abandoned cart reminders are more likely to be noticed and engaged with, especially when paired with an offer or media-rich message.
Whether you send a personalized discount, offer to help answer questions, or create FOMO with an “this item is almost gone” stock notification, automated cart reminders help your business do more with your WhatsApp messages.
Make WhatsApp a high-converting marketing channel for your business
WhatsApp can help you maximize marketing resources, digital ad spend, and your conversations with customers. Using these helpful tips can leverage WhatsApp to help drive marketing outcomes for your organization, creating a full-funnel approach to messaging that attracts, nurtures, and re-engages your customers.
Curious about how other businesses are achieving marketing success with WhatsApp messages? Check out our latest success stories.